How silly of me to forget
he's dead.
I should have written it down.
I was so quiet climbing out of my bunkbed
trying not to step on him.
I felt so stupid wondering
where he was
and then remembering...
So I chewed a whole roll of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers
watching the mirror in the dark
just to see them spark.
It was the first time
I did it without him
and it was quite some time
before I did it again.
It's just not the same.
Author's Note: My grandma used to give us candy at night waiting for our parents to come home. She gave us Wint-O-Green Lifesavers because they smelled like our toothpaste. We were lying in bed eating candy waiting for our parents to come home. When we heard the garage door, my brother shoved the rest of his roll in his mouth. I leaned over to tell him he was going to get us in trouble and I could see sparks in his mouth as he frantically chewed the lifesavers. After that, all we did was ask Grandma for Wint-O-Green Lifesavers and then chew them up in the closet one at a time taking turns watching the sparks.
Me chewing the roll of candy was my first attempt at establishing a sense of normalcy to my life after his death. It didn't bring him back and it didn't make me feel any better. All it did was make me Cry.
Why do they spark? It is called Triboluminesence.
When the sugar crystals in the candy are crushed they are cracked and fractured. As the sugars are crushed and separated, the positive and negative charges in the crystal pieces excite electrons in nitrogen molecules and the energy released from this is visible as a spark.
The wintergreen flavor (methyl salicylate) in Wint-O-Green lifesavers is naturally fluorescent and makes the mostly invisible (ultraviolet) sparks more visible, and more fun!
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